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Chewing Toward Bethlehem

Credit
Illustration by R.O. Blechman/The New York Times; Photo by Cornelia Griggs

Chewing. It is a constant with Scout. She has razor-sharp puppy teeth and thinks everything, from my wrists to every shoe and flip-flop in the house, is grist for those little chompers. The other night, we thought she was chewing happily and permissibly on a rawhide bone. She was actually chewing on the leg of a nearby telephone table. The chewing sound was identical.

We have a puppy gate that keeps Scout in the rear of our house, where we have an open kitchen and family room. But even sequestered and puppy-proofed, the area has a million temptations, from the cording on the couch upholstery to the wires of our computers. We live in fear of puppy electrocution.

The area on top of her crate has been christened The Land of No, where we can quickly put objects she finds that belong in a no-chew zone. While we were watching TV, a white sneaker toppled from the crate roof to the floor, and in a nanosecond it was in Scout’s mouth. I dived for the shoe and managed to return it to safety.

Clumps of grass clippings from the lawnmower. Pine cones. Even hard shells on the beach. All are mouthed and chewed and sometimes swallowed. Nothing tragic has been chewed to pieces, or eaten, yet.

Friends have prepared me with cautionary tales. Phyllis, my college roommate, told me, “Chewing was almost the end for us.” Lola, her Labrador puppy, managed to chew through a comfy chair and even succeeded in savaging the linoleum when Phyllis gated her in the kitchen, where in theory nothing could be damaged. My friend Anna told me that her queenly Lab, Bea, was fascinated with paper as a puppy. Valuable paper. She once ate a refund check from the State of New York, and went through $400 in $20 bills.

I can see that we’ll soon have to move The Land of No to even higher ground, although the crate, where Scout sleeps and naps, is tall enough for her estimated eventual size of about 55 pounds. This is how big the breeder thought she would get, but her guesstimate may prove conservative. During the vet visit for her second round of shots, everyone commented on her big paws.

She would happily eat twice what we are giving her, a combination of sensitive-skin formula kibble with a frosting of plain yogurt, the puppy diet suggested by the breeder. She is gaining a half-pound a day and now weighs more than 20 pounds.

This time around, Henry has instituted a ban on human food except for the yogurt on the kibble. I’m not grilling chicken, as I did for our last dog, Buddy. He became a fussy-eater beggar and wouldn’t touch his kibble without extra human food.

During her earliest weeks with us, Scout had been indifferent to our family gatherings at the table, which I attributed to the new, stricter food rules. But one night she began barking like crazy while Henry was eating a bowl of strawberries with whipped cream. Funny, he thought, strawberries don’t usually appeal to dogs. Then, as I was scattering cheese on top of a pan of lasagna, Scout went nuts as I shoved the pan into the oven. Henry put two and two together: the white toppings on our food looked like hers.

The fatal connection — between our food and her always-hungry stomach — had been made. I worry that we may never eat peacefully again. Already, we have had to stick Scout in the laundry room while we down a meal listening, all of us miserable, to her pathetic wailing.

I called my friend Jane, who has trained three Labrador retrievers, including Peaches, yellow and regal, for whom we occasionally dog-sat. Peaches was mellow about everything but food. I was once in my kitchen, baking a cake, and had taken out a stick of butter to soften on the counter. In the instant that I turned around to get the eggs out of the fridge, the butter was gone. Peaches had only a slightly guilty expression on her face.

“Food can be your friend,” Jane has reassured me. “It is a great reward. She wants to please you.”

For now we are sticking to puppy treats. Her favorite is Pup-Peroni, which we have in “original bacon recipe.” She already recognizes the packaging and goes into ecstasy at first sight of it. I remember my daughter Cornelia’s face looking similarly euphoric when I gave her, against my better judgment, her first Cheeto.

Because we are getting Scout ready for her first visit to Manhattan, I am trying to practice walking with a leash. I think things are going well until I feel a tug, look behind me, and see Scout on her back, her adorable belly exposed, snapping at the leash like a turtle. For her, it is simply another instrument for chewing.

Note to readers: I am still reading and absorbing the large volume of comments on last week’s column, including many that are critical of the decision to purchase a dog from a breeder. This is an important subject that, after time for additional reflection and reporting, I intend to write more about in future posts.